Contemplation Is The Loving Sense

Place No Hope In The Feeling Of Assurance, In Spiritual Comfort. You May Well Have To Get Along Without This. Place No Hope In The Inspirational Preachers Of Christian Sunshine, Who Are Able To Pick You Up And Set You Back On Your Feet And Make You Feel Good For Three Or Four Days-until You Fold Up And Collapse Into Despair. Self-confidence Is A Precious Natural Gift, A Sign Of Health. But It Is Not The Same Thing As Faith. Faith Is Much Deeper, And It Must Be Deep Enough To Subsist When We Are Weak, When We Are Sick, When Our Self-confidence Is Gone, When Our Self-respect Is Gone.

For Although God Is Right With Us And In Us And Out Of Us And All Through Us, We Have To Go On Journeys To Find Him.

A Gentle Sense Of Humor Will Be Alert To Detect Anything That Savors Of A Pious 'act' On The Part Of The Penitent.

The Beginning Of Love Is To Let Those We Love Be Perfectly Themselves, And Not To Twist Them To Fit Our Own Image. Otherwise We Love Only The Reflection Of Ourselves We Find In Them.

Very Well, Then: Why Are You Attached To Any One Book, Or To The Words And Ways Of One Saint When He Himself Tells You To Let Them Go And Walk In Simplicity? To Hang On To Him As If To Make A Method Of Him Is To Contradict Him And To Go In The Opposite Direction To The One In Which He Would Have You Travel.